Teacher and service employee unions organized the walk-ins at the schools to pressure lawmakers to improve per-student allocations and lessen the favored financial and other terms granted charter and voucher programs.

The Florida Senate rejected a House proposal to dissolve teacher unions if membership falls below a certain point, but also approved a version of a school voucher program funding private school students.

It is actually an endorsement from all six county public sector unions, so Staly is now backed by cops, teachers, school service employees, county and Palm Coast firefighters, and Palm Coast’s blue-collar workers, representing in all a block of 2,000 employees and many more family members, friends and neighbors.

Workers at Grand Oaks Rehab Center in Palm Coast, most on poverty wages, walked out for 24 hours, though they’d given the facility almost two weeks’ notice and replacements ensured no residents lacked care.

The new organization, joining teachers, cops, firefighters, school employees and municipal workers, aims to rival Realtors, home builders and the chamber in political influence and regain some power in collective bargaining.

The press room union filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board on June 3, charging that GateHouse Media illegally abrogated their collective bargaining agreement and is trying to bust the union.

The firefighters’ union’s first contract since 2011 gives firefighters with more experience more money. For nine years, firefighters were hired at the same rate of pay as existing firefighters with many more years of service.

Sheriff’s deputies and other employees have been without a serious raise in five years and the sheriff and union are at a negotiating impasse, but both sides are attempting to reach agreement on a small prize: a 1 percent raise the county commission pledged employees this year.

Palm Coast firefighters and the city administration reached an impasse in December after more than three years of negotiations over a contract, leaving it to the city council on Friday to settle the dispute in an unusual hearing.

A decisive majority of the 140 blue-collar workers in Palm Coast’s utilities department—the city’s largest—voted last week to unionize, making them the second city department to do so. The city’s 50-some firefighters unionized in 2010 but are currently at an impasse over contract negotiations.

In light of the failed vote to unionize a VW plant in Tennessee, why should we care about the travails of labor unions in our country? Because, with no one in Washington able to effectively represent workers nationwide, unions are the only ones left to fight for a living wage.

The Senate proposal dramatically overhauling the pension plans for many future public employees sets off a highly anticipated election-year fight between unions and Republican legislative leaders. Only firefighters and cops would be allowed to stay in FRS.

A Senate committee pushed forward Wednesday with a bill that would overhaul how local governments fund pensions for police officers and firefighters, hoping that a different political climate in 2014 will allow the legislation to succeed after it died in the House during the spring legislative session.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals declared an executive order by Riock Scott to drug-test 85,000 state employees and all job applicants as mostly unconstitutional, but left room for a lower court decision to be rewritten to allow for certain employees in certain categories to be drug tested–essentially restoring Florida’s drug-testing standard to what it was before the governor’s executive order.

Labor union membership has been in precipitous decline since 1980, along with with a decline in job security, workers’ wages and benefits, and Americans’ standard of living. It’s not a coincidence, though the vilification of labor unions continues.

A decision in the case challenging a 2011 law that required employees to contribute 3 percent of their income to their retirement funds could cost the state around $2 billion if the Supreme Court strikes down the law.

With hundreds of millions of dollars a year hinging on their decision, Florida Supreme Court justices Friday began deliberating about whether to uphold a 2011 law that requires government workers to chip in 3 percent of their pay to the state retirement system.

Inspired by Ronald Reagan’s union-busting, the latest round in the war on labor is a self-inflicted wound on the American economy, where workers-union and non-union alike–have been losing ground for 30 years.

The 3 percent contribution and the end of cost of living adjustments to public employees’ pensions may not be legal; if reversed, the state would see an almost $1 billion hole open up. Local governments would also be affected.

Flagler County and Florida residents are falling in heaps with praise for the same public and union employees they and the lawmakers they elected just finished bashing, insulting, demeaning and robbing. The disconnect is sickening.